BEWARE!! Saving Your Phone Number In Facebook Profile Can Be Dangerous

Do you put your phone number on your Facebook profile? It’s time that you should stop doing that. Despite your privacy settings, anybody can find your details and location by just typing your phone number in Facebook search bar — and cyber criminals could misuse your details, reports IndiaToday.

Technical director of Salt.agency, Reza Moaiandin, used a coding script to generate every possible number combination in Britain, US and Canada. He then sent millions of numbers to Facebook’s app-building programme (API) in bulk. In return, he received millions of unobstructed personal profiles.

Moaiandin said:

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“With this security loophole, a person with the right knowledge can harvest the non-private details of the users who allow public access to their phone numbers, enabling the harvester to then use or sell the user details for purposes that the user may not be happy with.”

Though Facebook was notified about the same in April and was asked to pre-encrypted APIs, the security loophole remains intact, leaving the site’s 1.44 billion users open to hacks. According to a RAND report, Twitter and Facebook accounts are now more profitable than stolen credit cards.

Pictures, names, phone numbers, education history and locations can be sold on a network of illegal trading sites.